NADA Miami Art Fair At Ice Palace Film Studios, Miami, Florida

Old school but über cool would be an affectionate yet highly respectful way to describe NADA Miami, the art fair which opens Thursday, December 7, at Ice Palace Film Studios. There are at least 16 other art fairs running concurrently this year during Miami Art Week. (Others may pop up.) You cannot take them all in. VIPs will attend First Choice, an invitation only Art Basel Miami Beach preview this Wednesday, but many rewards await and will tempt fair-goers who attend NADA Miami. It was and remains a maverick art fair, testing the boundaries of more conventional art fairs.

NADA Miami exudes a bohemian bonhomie for good reason: it is a community of communities. As the only non-profit member-based art fair organization, NADA (the acronym for the New Art Dealers Alliance) was founded in 2002 by dealers for dealers as a “democratically run” business co-op. Everything that NADA does is meant to be a support system for galleries. But its other three communities are equally important and well integrated: artists whose works propel the galleries’ business; collectors who sustain the gallery ecosystem with their purchases, and the broader cultural communities in the organization’s host cities and beyond.

NADA’s audience—both in Miami and New York—is the wider public. NADA’s fairs are geared toward a wide range of people, and not just a handful of major collectors and art advisors who attend VIP previews. In Miami, NADA is an alternative platform, selling contemporary art at lower price points than the Art Basel fairs and often showcasing the “newest of the new” and the sometimes re-discovered. It is art from the past, present and future. This year, for example, Proyectos Ultravioleta, a gallery from Guatemala City, will exhibit collages by Elisabeth Wild (b. 1922), whose work was featured in this year’s documenta 14 http://www.documenta14.de/en/artists/13597/elisabeth-wild. Further along, the photographs of Adam Rzepecki (b. 1950), one of the most important Polish artists of the 1980s, will be on view at Galeria Dawid Radziszewski from Warsaw http://www.dawidradziszewski.com/artists/adam-rzepecki/. Vibrant, ecstatic and heartwarmingly sinister drawings by Bailey Scieszka (b. 1989) http://baileyscieszka.com/ will punch you in the nose at What Pipeline and Queer Thoughts.

It is important for NADA to be accessible and provide opportunities to collectors as much as galleries and artists. According to NADA’s Executive Director, Heather Hubbs, a veteran of gallery, auction and art fair market channels, works are available from a few hundred dollars to five figures, infrequently much more. This helps to nurture younger, middle-class collectors, who will sustain contemporary art in the future. Hubbs is refreshingly candid and unpretentious about the business of art fairs, “Yes, we get window shoppers—but that’s how we inform and educate. We encourage that. We host talks and programming specifically for that reason. The art world is a more democratic place than we give it credit for.”

Hubbs, NADA’s director since 2004, has overseen the expansion of the organization and its Miami and New York fairs. As she put it, “the art world fair circuit was not the hegemonic calendar we have today. We have adapted to the changing art market, and jumped at the opportunity to show artists to a wider and more international viewership.” Hubbs continued, “I do see art fairs as beneficial to the art world, and there’s a threefold argument for that: I think fairs benefit the artists, collectors, gallerists, because they can expose their artists in and to new markets.”

This year, NADA Miami will showcase contemporary art from around the world, with 121 exhibitors, representing 36 cities from 16 different countries, including Argentina, Colombia, Czech Republic, Guatemala, Hungary, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates. This is in stark contrast to NADA’s first Miami fair in 2003, which featured 40 galleries. Naturally this growth reflects the expansion of the contemporary art market. Yet, NADA has taken the initiative to grow and diversify, offering larger spaces and more robust—“with it”—programming.

NADA is a reflection of its diverse members, who discover, champion, and support contemporary talent. (There are also galleries that show what could be classified as “outsider art.”) Contemporary art is the market of growth, the market of the future. Often taking the creative lead, NADA has sought to innovate how it operates its fairs and engages its communities. For galleries, NADA provides infrastructural support with prizes awarded to under-resourced galleries that exhibit emerging talent. These are galleries that may not be able to afford a booth on their own. This year, NADA Miami, arranged a new Acquisition Gift in partnership with the Pérez Art Museum Miami. An artwork for the museum’s permanent collection will be selected from the fifteenth edition of the fair.

The fair’s youthful, even quirky, programs includes opening and closing ceremonies by Miami-based artist Loni Johnson, a new performance by Czech artist Jiri Kovanda, artist DJ sets and book signings, and an opening day performance from Superchunk an American indie rock band from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Select programming will be live-streaming and archived on Know-Wave.com. Further underscoring its own particular brand of cool and artist support, NADA Miami produces and sells artist’s editions itself. This year NADA is offering a limited-edition, throwback concept, calendar ($40) by Ken Kagami and a custom woven beach towel ($150) by Amanda Ross-Ho. Also on deck at the Ice Palace Studios is dining by the Miami restaurant Ariete, which offers ingredient-driven Cuban cuisine.

In the aftermaths of Hurricanes Irma and Maria, the art community infrastructure in Puerto Rico was devastated. Underscoring its community-driven consciousness and outreach, NADA is hosting a benefit for the Emergency Fund for Cultural Workers in Puerto Rico on Friday, December 10. This event is designed to help to guarantee that cultural workers can recover and contribute to a sustainable transformation of the island. More information can be found at https://www.newartdealers.org/nadawave.